


Something Needs to Give

by Felbarashla



Series: Jupiter Makes a Mess of Things [1]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/M, Minor Angst, this is just random
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-12 02:56:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20135182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felbarashla/pseuds/Felbarashla
Summary: Jupiter Jones has been back on Earth for weeks just pretending that everything is like it was before, just now with the inclusion of Mr. Wise and some lessons in flight and self-defense. But now Stinger wants to have a word on the future.First ever fanfiction and no beta.





	Something Needs to Give

Five weeks seems like it can go by in an instant, or it can drag on forever, depending on what is happening in your life. Jupiter felt like the last five weeks had been a year, too many things had happened for her to take for granted her life and family. It made her appreciate what she had, and live in the moment. When she returned to Earth, Jupiter really just wanted a bit of normal to make her feel like herself. She was trying to juggle her time-consuming cleaning job, and spending time with a new guy she was really into, and taking self defense courses. It sounds normal if you word it that way, right? I mean, the self defense courses are from the guy she is into, who happens to be a part wolf alien with metal wing attachments, and the defenses are needed to fend off the next assassin, but it’s not that unusual… sort of.

Tonight she was supposed to have dinner at the Apini farm and stay the night. There were no houses to clean too early tomorrow but Jupiter didn’t want to hear her mother lecture her endlessly so she wrote a note and left it on her pillow. Hopefully it would take a while for her to notice and Aleksa wouldn’t spend the evening trying to call her over and over. She was nervous enough about this meeting without her mother guilt tripping her about leaving the house overnight. And regardless of how it was worded, this was definitely going to be a space related meeting. Jupiter doubted Stinger wanted them all to get together to play Monopoly. Though, depending on what they talked about maybe it was an apt comparison, using a bunch of money that doesn’t seem real and owning property that seemed ridiculous to own. Competing with a set of other players all trying to bankrupt the others and be the one with the most impossible to own things in the end.

She and Caine were on their way to the farm now. This meeting would be the first time everyone had gotten together at the same time to actually talk about things. Caine was driving the car, one she hoped wasn’t stolen this time, so Jupiter could look out the window and think about things. But Jupiter didn’t want to think about the statistical probability of an attack, or how many space bucks she had. She just wanted to pretend her life was normal again, and ignore the constant hovering of her guards and the ominous knowledge that there really are aliens out there and they want the Earth’s population to make people juice. She couldn’t exactly ignore Stinger’s request though.

Jupiter and Stinger had been awkward around each other since her inaugural foray into space. He had betrayed her, expecting her to die, and even though it was to save the life of his daughter it made things tense. She wanted to talk about it, like ‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’, but he undoubtedly considered it and had thought Titus a better option. Probably he didn’t think she would live long enough to help and Kiza’s health was too important to bet on some backwater Tercie. Either way, Stinger was helping Caine with guard duty and even though they didn’t need to be joined at the hip there were definitely awkward silences and anxious looks on both sides.

Stinger was nearby when Caine parked in front of the farmhouse. He was patrolling, preferring to move around in a perimeter than stick close to her side as Caine did. She didn’t know if that was just their styles or if Stinger was trying to avoid conversation. Not that they could talk much while she was scrubbing floors and navigating female relatives. Jupiter was surprised he still seemed to be keeping his distance, but he stopped when he saw the car and beckoned them inside.

Dinner was more interesting than Jupiter expected, mainly because Kiza and Caine kept the conversation going with only the occasional comment needed. They were all together in the living room, the bees holed up in their hives and getting a head start on sleep. It seemed as though things might turn out okay until dinner was over. Kiza jumped up to wash the dishes and Caine mentioned something about using some of the tools here to repair his gear. Caine she might have shrugged off, but no teenaged girl is in that much of a hurry to wash dishes. Was this going to be a conversation about Stinger betraying her for Kiza? She seemed to know about this talk but did Kiza actually know what happened on Ouros? Stinger handed his plate off to Kiza and watched her leave the room. Then he turned to Jupiter and sighed in what seemed like frustration. “Let’s you and I take a walk around Your Majesty.”

Jupiter followed him outside and off the porch, and it seemed like he was going to start walking his patrols with her in tow this time. She didn’t know if he did that knowingly, or if he just started walking in a direction and his feet just led him in the familiar patterns he was used to. Or was this a bee thing? Maybe he had a mental map of how he scoped out the area and he didn’t need to think about it? Either way, trying to keep up with Stinger while he mindlessly stomped out a perimeter check didn’t sound like fun. Neither did following him around until he wanted to talk. She reached out to grab his arm and say something, but he turned as she grabbed him. She didn’t have time to say anything before he rounded on her. At first she thought she startled him and it was a defensive response, but he looked so angry she doubted it was just instinct. He closed his eyes and visibly tried to restrain himself. She watched him breathe for a second and when he opened his eyes he seemed just as angry, just ruthlessly contained. “Permission to speak, Your Majesty?” 

Was he seriously still standing on ceremony? Jupiter has been told that the Entitled were powerful in a way she couldn’t quite grasp, but she tended to forget that her new friends had grown up in fear of people like her their whole lives. She wanted to be normal, and have the people in her life treat her like she was normal. She didn’t want people to bow and scrape and call her “Your Majesty” at the end of every sentence. Or at all, but he seemed set on being formal. So, she set her shoulders and looked up at him calmly before saying “Of course.”

Permission given, the frustration and anger seemed to seep out of him and into the air. Stinger began to pace and run his hands over his short hair over and over, before giving up and standing right in front of her. Jupiter just stood there and watched but it seemed like he really needed to vent to someone and she guessed that someone was her. She expected concerns about Kiza or a conversation about them trusting each other, but instead he started off with “Do you know how many attacks there have been on Earth since you got back? Or how many assassins or hunters have been after you? Do you not care at all about your own safety?!” He paused, waiting for her to say something, but she was not prepared for this conversation. “You need to stop ignoring your responsibilities, you have a job to do and instead you are playing house!”

Jupiter was floored. “What are you talking about Stinger? We beat the Abrasax family and came home. I own the Earth now. What do you want from me? I just want some time to be  _ me  _ again, to appreciate my family and the normal problems that seemed so awful just a few weeks ago.” Now she was getting angry, trying to pretend like bad things hadn’t happened to you maybe wasn’t the best coping strategy but other than Caine she didn’t really have anyone to talk to. “No one should be coming here, and shouldn’t the Aegis be keeping people from showing up anyway?”

Stinger looked at Jupiter and frowned. “Caine wanted to keep this information from you, more concerned with keeping you happy than keeping you aware of what is actually happening while you are cleaning houses. There have been four attempts on your life since we got back to Earth. Four! And those are just the ones that made it to the ground, it doesn’t even count whoever tried and got discouraged by the Aegis cruiser in orbit around the planet. Caine and I have been working constantly with almost no down time for sleep or food because you only have two people to guard you.” 

“You haven’t gotten your royal guard, you haven’t hired a house guard, you haven’t even talked to an accountant about accessing your funds, which means we have no resources. Once our Legion reinstatements go through we can get our paychecks from the Skyjackers, and we can use that to buy food and bullets and everything else we need. But since you haven’t officially requested your royal guard we could be sent somewhere else at any time since our wings have gone through.” He paused, looking to see if anything he was saying was making an impact. “Your Majesty, you have to take your responsibilities seriously. They won’t go away because you’re ignoring them.”

Stinger stopped talking and waited for some sort of response. Jupiter still stood stiffly across from him, her shoulders tensing up as he went into his lecture, but otherwise unmoved. “You know I don’t want people to call me Your Majesty. And I don’t want to be an Entitled. I don’t want to own people, or people juice, or planets. I just want to be with my family and worry about things like how I’m going to replace my new expensive phone that got destroyed in a refinery on another planet. I don’t want to go around wearing outfits worth more than planets and learning the rules of corporate espionage and stock prices.”

Some of what Stinger said suddenly sank in and she blurted “You don’t have any money? Of course you don’t have money. I’m not sure how to go about paying you with space money but I can definitely do that. Am I supposed to be paying the Aegis crew too or are they paid by someone else? I don’t know how any of this works! You can’t expect me to understand this whole society and how everything functions when I didn’t even know it existed until now.” Jupiter put her palm to her forehead and started to pace back and forth in front of Stinger as she continued, “I guess I need to contact someone at a space bank where Seraphi’s money was and set something up to pay you and Caine?” 

“Your Majesty can talk to someone at first, but paying us isn’t actually the issue here. There are only two of us to protect you and Captain Tsing will not be able to keep the ship here forever, the Aegis has other duties. Right now they are supposed to be protecting you while you get your own things established but they also have to continue doing their jobs, and need supplies. Without your royal retinue established we cannot do even the basics of what we need. What happens when too many hunters come? What happens if Caine or I get hurt or killed protecting you? You won’t have anyone else here with you to keep you safe and you’ll end up back on Titus Abraxas’ ship or worse. You have to start doing your job.”

Jupiter looked upset at the concept and Stinger winced at her response. “Can I just get the royal guard so you guys have backup and just pay you? Why am I required to do all that other Entitled mess? People will stop attacking me eventually, right? These people live a long time so a few years or decades should be nothing to them.”

“Yes, Entitleds live for thousands of years and see things in the long term so attacks may go down eventually. But they also know that if you hold the title for Earth that it will not just go to them when you die, it will go to your next of kin biologically. Which means if they decide not to kidnap and torture you until you adbicate the throne, they will wait until you die and then kidnap whoever takes the title after you. Do you want to be responsible for the members of your family being kidnapped again, and tortured for a title they don’t know they have because you didn’t want to tell them about it? And that is assuming they don’t just kidnap all of you and make you watch them kill your family one by one until you agree.

“If you don’t actually establish yourself and get employees,” he drew the word out, uncertain if it could even apply to owned Splices and contracted protection, “everyone you care about will end up dead, including your family. I know you don’t want to hear this Your Majesty but you had the courage to go after them when Balem had kidnapped them. Do you not have the courage to do this as well?”

Jupiter lifted her hand enough to glare at him. “You are still calling me Your Majesty. And there is a difference between helping someone in danger and rejecting my whole world to make myself a pampered member of the Super Secret Spoiled Entitled Club.”

“I am still calling you Your Majesty because that is your title. You are my queen and call-” 

“Do you actually want me to be your queen?” Jupiter didn’t know what Stinger wanted now that he had Kiza back. “Are you just doing this out of guilt or because you feel like you’re supposed to? Because they engineered you to protect Entitleds?” It would explain why he was so angry about the situation if he resented having to take care of a queen he didn’t care about instead of going back to the Legion he missed, and being a leader again.

Stinger glared at her feet as she paced and tried again. “I understand that you might question my loyalty to you. My actions were unforgivable and while I regret the danger to you I don’t regret helping my daughter. If your concern stems from fearing for your safety I can contact the Legion and ask for reassignment.” Before he could continue, Jupiter interjected again.

“But do you  _ want _ to be here? Didn’t you want to get off this planet and go back to leading soldiers again?”

“If Your Majesty will get her royal guard and house guard established, that will no longer be an issue. Assuming you wish me to remain in your service and want me in a leadership role. And my concern with the planet was about being stuck here with no prospects for the future. Working in a royal alcazar is not the same thing as working on a farm alone as a punishment.”

“So if I, “she waves her hands around in the air between them “establish myself and a royal retinue or whatever, you want to stay and work for me? For the crazy Earth reincarnation who doesn’t know how anything works and trusts too many people?” Jupiter hadn’t considered it before and was horrified she just took for granted that Stinger was protecting her. Was she turning into one of those people who just assumed things about the people under them? She wanted to make sure that the people she worked with actually wanted to be there and weren’t pining for some other place or position. 

“Your Majesty, you forget that splices don’t get a say in where they go and what they do. If I was moved to the regular Legion troops I would be going into action where and when I was told and working with a group of soldiers the same way I should be working here. My concerns are about insufficient resources and not being able to do the job I am supposed to be doing.”

“So, you just want to bring problems to my attention because you don’t want to be seen as ineffective? Okay, that’s sort of one of the biggest problems I have with,” she used air quotes here “ ‘establishing a household’ as a royal here. I would want the people who work for me to be there because they want to. Loyalty is a good motivator and useful to have in employees, but people having the choice to do what they want is even better. I don’t want people around me who are there because I own them, or because they are terrified of me. And I don’t want to be afraid that anyone who works for me could betray me because they hate me.”

“Your Majesty. Jupiter. The fact is that you really have three options here and anything you do at this point is just a variation of one of those options. You need to pick something and stick with it because no matter what, all of this is your decision. You can keep going like you are until we all end up dead for one reason or another and another Entitled, likely an Abrasax, ends up harvesting the Earth. You could talk to someone, maybe Kalique, and give everything you have to her, on the condition that she not harvest the Earth for a set amount of time, like another century or two. Then the assassins would slow down because you wouldn’t have anything to give them and Kalique would own the planet and be responsible for its protection. But the planet will get harvested and you would have to trust her to take care of things and not figure out a loophole. Your only other option is to take command as a queen and protect yourself and your people. 

“You need a full retinue and a place for them to live and work. You can figure out how you get those people and who you keep but you need them to do what they do. You have to tell your family who and what you are, but then you can provide for them in a way you cannot right now. You can bribe officials to get them citizenship, give them homes and pay for college and cars and all the things they want but can’t have right now. You need to set up planetary defenses not just here but on all your other planets as well. And might I remind you that right now those people have nothing protecting them because you haven’t hired anyone to do that. 

“If you want to give splices more rights and all the other things you think are wrong you have to establish yourself and hire people to help you do research and write arguments.” He looked awkward as he said the next part, knowing it needed to be said but that Jupiter wouldn’t like it. “The things you want to do with a society that is hundreds of thousands of years old is going to take a long, long time. You will probably have to have several Recodes to do it. I know you don’t like Regenex and you don’t need it to be a queen, but you will need it if you want to change things.”

Jupiter waved the thought away dramatically before saying, “I can worry about whether or not to take people juice later. Right now I have enough to think about without adding more ethics violations to my plate. I am going to have to think about this Stinger. And I don’t even know how to go about hiring anyone. How do I find the first people who can get me in touch with the next people, when I have to find someone I can trust and who wants to be loyal to me? If I don’t start with good people I will have a giant mess on my hands and I’ll end up getting assassinated anyway.

“What do you think I should do right now? I mean, I need time to think about this before I do anything, and I know you want me to hire guards but other than that? This is huge and I don’t know how I’m supposed to get started. Do I find a place for everyone to live first? If I do that how am I supposed to pay for it? And even if I do, do I just buy a mansion or something or buy land and have something built or use some place Seraphi already owned on another planet somewhere? Or if I get guards first to protect me, do I go to Ouros for that? And where will they live and train and everything? Who picks them and what happens if they hate me?”

“Why do you assume people will hate you? You are a queen and they are tasked with protecting you. They will be expecting someone who will do horrible things with little to no provocation who considers them expendable assets. They are much better off with you than serving someone else.”

“But will they see it that way or will they not respect me because I don’t act the way I’m supposed to? Will people look at me and think I’m weak because I care what splices think?”

“Who cares what those people think. You are a queen and can do whatever you want. You can murder people and get away with it, only other Entitleds can say anything bad about you caring about odd things. If you end up with a guard that doesn’t respect you, you replace that guard with someone else. Just because you don’t want to kill everyone who displeases you doesn’t mean you have to keep someone on who you don’t trust to do their job.”

Jupiter nodded but her gaze was unfocused, not seeing what was in front of her but a hypothetical future where she controlled the lives of billions of people. But it wasn’t hypothetical because she already did that, she just wasn’t doing a good job. The knowledge that she should have been doing more was crushing both because it felt like too much responsibility and because of the guilt she felt about ignoring people who needed her protection and didn’t have it. She started pacing quickly again.

“This is too much to decide right now, I need somewhere to think. Can you just, like, point me somewhere I can think alone without too high a chance hunters will grab me? I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

“You can go to the barn? If it were during the day I wouldn’t worry because the bees could watch out for you but they have all gone to roost for the night.” He paused before joking, “you may want to also consider getting a communication implant and a tracker so that you can contact us and so if you do get taken again we can find you more easily.”

“Well if you’re doing your job it won’t be an issue and I don’t have to worry about it.” She stomped off towards the barn and got halfway there before she was less agitated and started to really think about what she was going to do. By the time she got to the barn she had tears rolling down her cheeks and was too upset to work the old barn door she wasn’t familiar with. “Damn you wood! Just do what I want and open!” She yanked on the handle before she managed to get it open and then whirled through and closed it behind her, leaning against the wood and looking around before collapsing on the ground in frustration at the situation as a whole.

Her Majesty Queen Jupiter Jones, the recurrence of the mighty Seraphi Abrasax, cried on the dirt barn floor owned by a Splice who had lectured her about her duties. Once she thought about it she slapped her hands on the ground on either side of her legs and laughed through her tears thinking about someone trying to explain the situation to someone in this galactic society that hadn’t met her. How was she going to find employees who didn’t just quit in horror when they met her? She wasn’t used to having money and most of the people she knew with money were awful and condescended to anyone they could.

She would have to be like Katherine Dunlevy, who hired the people she needed to but still treated them like people. Jupiter had always been interested in Katherine’s life and appreciated the chance to talk to someone around her age about things like clothes and guys. She would just have to walk a line between Katherine Dunlevy and Kalique Abrasax. But that would mean actually being a queen for real, and accepting that she ruled people, and owned planets. She had spent her adult life as a housecleaner, not a leader. And anything she did could get people killed even if it was just because they worked for her, or because they were following the orders of people who wanted her dead.

Jupiter wanted to bury her head under the covers and keep pretending all of this was just a bad dream, but she knew that wasn’t possible and now that she had been confronted about it, continuing to ignore things would just make her feel worse about everything. She closed her eyes and took a deep slow breath to try and even out her stuttering and hiccuping, and laughed again when she tried to wipe her tears and got dirt on her face.  _ I can be a queen with dirt on my hands instead of blood,  _ she thought.  _ Work on the good things and work for people instead of profit margins.  _ With that decided, she slowly got up, straightened up, and walked back towards the farmhouse to get started.


End file.
